Farming with focus on Sustainability, Education & Biodynamically connecting inputs/outputs of life in a beautiful Symbiosis.
A quick trip from anywhere in the South Bay Area, we are conveniently located in Cupertino, California.

We are a federally approved 501(c)(3) public charity, i.e. all donations are tax deductible!

Often the Hummingbird is used to describe the term Symbiosis, it is fed while it feeds. This is our model and final goal within the community and all other communities we will connect with. So far we have had visitors/donations from as far away as:
Bulgaria, China, Costa Rica, England, Eritrea, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Russia, Sumatra, Switzerland, Taiwan, Vietnam, Ukraine!

What’s Going on At Hummingbird Farm:

As a Biodynamic Farm, we try to find a use for each output and locally source each input. Just because you like to eat fruits and veggies from our Biodynamic Garden, did you ever wonder what is happening to the parts of the plant that you do not prefer to eat? Some people like to drink fresh Craft Beer or “Homebrew” made from whole grains. What happens to the grains after they are “spent” in the Brewing Process? Children and adults alike love to eat fruit straight from the Orchard; sadly, so do many insects. How can we turn our pest problem into a source of omega-3s and fertilizer? The answer to all of these questions is easy! Our Chickens love to eat those things! Besides eggs, our Chickens also produce nutrient rich compost for our Grain Fields, Hop Yard, Veggies and Orchard.

As a Sustainable Farm located in Cupertino California, we only use local people and are collecting a Team of Experts from around the Silicon Valley. Each person who works at our farm is an Expert of a particular field (pun intended), they manage/teach groups of Volunteers in activities that further their respective projects. Most of our Staff is filled with people who came with knowledge about their field already. There are a few exceptions and those people seem to work the hardest. Hummingbird Farm has pushed many of the Staff to develop their skills using free educational supplies from the library or internet.

Why do people Volunteer at Hummingbird Farm? Is it the free eggs that come from Chickens living on a natural diet of foraging for bugs and greens supplemented with organic feed? Is it the free Veggies and education about Companion Planting and Crop Rotation from our Biodynamic Garden? Perhaps they love fruit and nuts that grow on trees from our Orchard? It must be the great meals and drinks that bring together our community at our Volunteer Bring Friends and Family Picnics! Is Hummingbird Farm copying the Egyptian Pyramid model of providing Homebrew? Many people come for one or many of those reasons, but they stay for the feeling they get. The feeling of working on something, seeing progress, knowing it is good, and doing it with great people! We are a place for people to take a break from the Silicon Valley and enjoy the slower and more simple life with other like minded people!

Enough Hippie Talk! Where is the Money?

According to Miguel Altieri (Professor of Agroecology UC Berkeley): “When a sustainable agriculture is sustainable, it is because there is an overlapping of these three goals: It is socially just, economically viable, and ecologically safe. It is like a stool that has three legs. When one of those legs lacks; then, the stool falls down; therefore, the agriculture is not sustainable.” [Ripe for Change, 2005]

The first and last goal from Miguel Altieri are outlined above, but what about that middle part?

Donations have taken us thus far! People have heard what we are doing and share however they can. Smart Seeds, for example, gave us every seed that was requested by each volunteer at the Farm! Smart Seeds did it two years in a row! Handwoven Goods gave us a chicken tractor! Corporations like Timberland are even offering to send teams of people out on a regular basis, as we grow our list of Corporate Partnerships. Little things help too: Yamagami Nursery gave us pots, Pine Cone Lumber gave us wood for signs, Nichols Garden Nursery gave us Hops Rhizomes. There are individuals who give namelessly as well and in the words of PBS, we also give thanks to “Viewers like You“.

Why do people donate? We offer free education through our website and volunteer programs. We bring families together under the sun to see where their food comes from. We have left the rows of our garden wide enough for wheelchairs and intend to start helping people walk again! If you or someone you know is in a wheelchair, please contact us asap! We promote a feeling of community by pooling resources and sharing with each other. We hope to improve the health of people who visit by providing clean exercise, healthy food and inspiring know how to take with them where ever they go.

Some donations require a bit of nectar in return…thus we also offer the following services:

Guided Farm Tours – twice a month we open our farm for groups up to seven people to take a tour of our farm, ask questions and get their hands dirty on a seasonal farm activity. Kids love planting seeds with us in fall/spring.

Homestead Consulting – If you have your own homestead/piece of land, we would like to help you make the most of it.

Private Pickings - For a nice donation we will reserve any of our crops for you and a small group.

Farm to Picnic – Similar to the restaurants “Farm to Plate”, we remove the restaurant and place you in the garden under the warm California Sun or the Stars that can only be seen outside the light pollution of a city. This is twice a month and each meal includes a Guided Farm Tour from above. Plates/Cups are filled with our farm’s best!

Be Your Own Brewmaster – Brew beer at your own home/business/bar/wine vineyard/company party/frat house…right up to the legal limit!

Future Plans:

“Sunlight to Glass” Beer. What is this new term you may ask? We are coining this term right now! There is no brewery that grows every ingredient on site. There are no breweries that use non-GMO grains with all organic ingredients. We intend to be an educational center for homebrewers interested in learning about the many steps of making their beer beyond the extract brew. Our Farm is small in scale and we hope to someday expand our “Sunlight to Glass” brewing idea to a larger Farm, still near the Silicon Valley to provide a truly local beer which you know was made using strict organic methods for each ingredient. And yes, we will be re-using our bottles – not recycling them!

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Help us make a difference, Donate!

Any size donation is greatly appreciated. If we had a nickel each time someone enjoyed our webpage… each smiling person would smile again when they got a picture of how we spent that nickel! To find out how we use donations or to make one yourself Click here or just Click Below to make your donation via PayPal